Employment Rights Act 2025: What do you need to know? 

As of 6th April, the first wave of the Employment Rights Act 2025 has come into force, bringing a major shift in how the UK approaches workplace protections. Aimed at ending the era of insecure work, the changes reflect a wider rethink of how flexibility and security should work in today’s labour market. But as they start to take effect, the real question is what they actually mean in practice – for employers, workers, and the future of business.

Key areas of change include: 

• Day-one rights: Significant shifts to parental leave and sick pay. Paternity leave and unpaid parental leave will become ‘day-one’ rights, removing the previous one-year service requirement. 
• Statutory Sick Pay (SSP): Sick pay will be available from the first day of illness, removing the “waiting period” and the lower earnings limit
• Unfair dismissal reform: The qualifying period for unfair dismissal protection is set to be slashed from two years to just six months, alongside the removal of the compensation cap for claims.
• Gender pay gap and menopause action plans: Employers of all sizes can voluntarily publish action plans around menopause and gender pay gaps. In 2027, this will become mandatory for employers with 250+ workers.  
• Zero-hours protections: A ban on exploitative zero-hours contracts, giving workers the right to a contract that reflects their actual hours worked and compensation for cancelled shifts. 

These historic reforms which increase employee protections may be intimidating and hard to grapple with initially, but businesses who have implemented clear and concise communications with their employees will fare better in this new environment. 

In fact, despite the significance of the ruling, nearly 42% of employees admit they do not understand the upcoming changes to parental leave well enough to know how they are personally affected. 

This sentiment is shared across the board, with 41% of employees saying the same about new redundancy rights and protections regarding pay transparency and discrimination. 

The onus then falls on organisations to raise awareness about the Act, as well as ways in which they will be adapting accordingly. Businesses are in the position to inform, educate and empower their employees with these reforms, especially as a significant sect of the workforce is seemingly unaware, as our research shows. 

So what steps do businesses need to take? 

Firstly, businesses need to ensure they are supporting their HR teams and people teams in implementing these changes across the board so organisations can function fully compliant to the new changes.